They Are Union Shops, But . . .

SEOUL — In their competition with automakers in the Orient, U.S. auto companies are still far ahead in the area of wages and working conditions.

Most auto factories in China and South Korea have trade unions, for example, but the workers there may wonder why they bothered to organize.

When militant workers staged a work stoppage last year at Daewoo Motor Co., General Motors Corp.`s Korean affiliate, mediators negotiated a settlement after two weeks, and most employees returned to their jobs at the company`s Bupyong plant, located between Seoul and Inchon. But the strike organizers were jailed. The strike was successful in one regard: Workers won a modest hike in hourly wages, from $2.50 to $2.75.

Rival Hyundai Motor Co. has no union, and executives boast that the company, based in the southern port of Ulsan, has not had a strike in its 18 years. But then, Daewoo officials counter, Hyundai once threatened to sell the company if its workers organized.

To please the workers, Hyundai sponsors athletics for employees, such as soccer during their lunch break. The company also offers an ``encouragement allowance`` to soon-to-be-married workers and helps pay tuition for employees` children from middle school through university levels.

Both Daewoo and Hyundai have borrowed from Japanese management techniques, offering company-subsidized housing, health care, meals and transportation. Daewoo provides company buses to take workers to the beach in summer.

Chinese workers have yet to share such affluence with their Korean counterparts; autoworkers on the mainland earn a mere 65 cents an hour on the average (although government-subsidized housing costs only $2 a month). Fringe benefits at the major Chinese auto plants in Peking and Shanghai are slim. While workers in Japan and Korea collect semiannual bonuses, China has just begun offering modest once-a-year bonuses as an incentive to improve productivity and quality.

The typical workweek in China is eight hours a day, six days a week. By comparison, in Korea employees work 10 hours a day, six days a week, up from the usual 48-hour week. In China strikes are illegal, and there is no such thing as a labor contract; wages are established according to government guidelines.